I had been eagerly looking forward to the interview for months, ever since I read the novel Right Bank of Ergun River by Chi Zijian, which won one of China's highest literary awards, the Mao Dun Literature Prize, in 2008. This mesmerizing Ewenki epic aroused my interest in the Aoluguya living deep in the Greater Hinggan Mountains.

Taking the book along, I set off to meet the tribe with a colleague, hoping to get a chance to interview Maria Suo, the matriarch of the Aoluguya, who served as the protagonist's prototype in the novel.

"No one knows where exactly she is," said Yu Meng, our local guide in Genhe. She said that the woman, now in her 90s, lives as a hermit. "Though she has a house in the township, she always lives up in the mountains to care for her reindeer. She doesn't use the phone, and only speaks Ewenki."